This invention relates to a front end hydraulically operable hitch attachment, and more particularly to a hydraulically operable front end hitch attachment easily mounted on a hydraulically adjustable attachment carrier of a front end loader.
Front end skid steer loaders (such as those known under the name xe2x80x9cBOBCATxe2x80x9d), while relatively small in size as compared to many tractors, are exceedingly powerful and versatile. They are strikingly popular, and a multitude of attachments have been developed that can be quickly attached to the attachment carrier at the front end of the loader. The multitude of known attachments that are available include augurs, backhoes, brooms, buckets, trenchers, cutters, chippers, concrete mixers, crushers, diggers, dozer blades, graders, rakes, pallet forks, snow blowers, tillers, scrapers, etc. Thus, an almost endless variety of attachments are available.
Despite the wide popularity and long and versatile use of front end loaders and the multitude of attachments designed particularly for them, there is nothing that could ever suggest a front end hydraulically operated hitch attachment. Instead, users have been left with manual hitching techniques that involve a requirement that the user get out of the cab and accomplish hitching by hand every time a towable vehicle is to be moved by a front end loader. Even then, past practice has left the user with severe limitation of angular movement simply because holes or the like in earth-moving buckets attached to front end loaders, while crudely effective for accomplishing a hitch to a towable vehicle, tend to limit the range of angular movement for a towable vehicle during towing action and are no solution at all to the problem of quickly hitching and moving a multitude of towable vehicles and aligning and realigning them for any particular storage or display or other purpose.
In short, it appears that the long and widespread need for quick and easy cab-controlled hitching and unhitching, using a front end loader for the added front view visual convenience it gives the operator, has been left unmet.
The invention provides a hydraulically operated front end hitch attachment easily mounted on the attachment carrier of a front end loader. The hitch attachment has a base plate equipped with a toe-heel receiver for a front end toe-heel attachment carrier on one face side and a hydraulically operated hitch attachment on the other face side or opposite side of the base plate.
The toe-heel receiver on the first side of the base plate has an upper lip flange projecting downwardly from the upper edge of the base plate so as to form an acute angle with respect to the base plate and a lower lip flange projecting downwardly to form an obtuse angle at the base or lower edge of the base plate, plus one or more openings for receiving locking wedges of the attachment carrier at the front end of the loader.
The hydraulically operated hitch on the second or other side of the base plate is exceedingly frugal in its components, even Spartan, with minimal but highly effective bracing. It has a lower hitch component and an upper hitch component.
The lower hitch component has a draw bar equipped with a hitching hole at its outer end.
The upper hitch component has an outwardly and upwardly extending boom with a hydraulic ram assembly suspended from the boom and braced by a mid-level bracing structure that circumscribes the cylinder of the hydraulic ram assembly and holds it in stable condition for a hitch pin at the-end of the ram to enter the hitching hole of the draw bar.
A removable link in the circumscribing structure permits replacement of a hydraulic ram assembly that is worn.
Other benefits and advantages of this invention will become evident as this description proceeds.